Famous Last Words

by Katie Alender

  But now, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Telling her about any of it would mean telling her all of it. And I’d been hiding things from my mother for so long that I couldn’t get a toehold.

  She didn’t even know the real reason my ex-boyfriend, Aiden, had broken up with me back home. She thought it was because he’d found another girl, when really it had been — how had he put it? — my “wall of pain.” Shutting myself in and shutting him out. My mother considered Aiden the bad guy, when the truth was that I was the one who couldn’t deal with being close to another person.

  Rather than answering, I leaned forward, unzipped the monstrosity, and slid the journal inside.

  “I should get going,” I said. “See you after school?”

  Mom nodded and leaned over to give me a hug and a kiss. Then I got out of the car before she could say anything else.

  Lunchtime. Where the lonely and friendless go to be devoured.

  I told myself that by the time I made it through the food line, the universe would, in an uncharacteristic fit of benevolence, find a way to show me where I was supposed to sit. Some girl from one of my morning classes would take pity, wave me over, and then BOOM, instant BFFs.

  Instead, I found myself holding my tray, staring out over a sea of people who seemed sophisticated, comfortable, and totally not in need of a new friend.

  The Langhorn lunchroom looked like the mutant offspring of a regular high school cafeteria and a hip nightclub. The ceiling was vaulted, with real wood beams, and the lights were nice hanging lamps, not cheap fluorescent bulbs. Then there were the couches, two semicircles in the center of the room. (So in case you wondered what thirty thousand dollars a year in tuition buys you — it’s the right to eat your lunch without a table.)

  As I made my way past the tables of smiling, laughing kids, someone called, “Hey, Connecticut.”

  A girl beckoned to me from one of the couches.

  I froze.

  She clucked her tongue at me, like I was a dog, and patted the sofa next to her.

  “You look agonizingly lonely.” Her voice had that detached flatness I was used to hearing from the kids at my old school who spent too much time in New York City. Only I could tell this girl really meant it, because the boredom went past her voice, into her eyes and the turned-down corners of her mouth.

  She wore exactly what the rest of the female students wore: a green-and-black-plaid skirt, white collared shirt, green cardigan, and black tights. But she seemed much older and wiser, like a twenty-five-year-old trapped in the body of a high school junior. Her blunt-cut black hair brushed her shoulders and her glasses were cat-eyed with rhinestones at the corners.

  “You’re staring, and it’s creeping me out,” she said. “Just sit, please.”

  I blinked. And then I sat.

  “I’m Marnie Delaine.” She nodded at the other kids next to us. “That’s Kas, Kinde, Rami, and Alana. And you’re Willa, right? Willa from Connecticut. I’m in your French class, second period. How do you like Langhorn?”

  I sat primly, my legs crossed at the ankles, lunch tray balanced on my lap. “Seems all right so far.”

  “Well, it’s only your first day. You’ll discover the sordid truth soon enough. Go ahead and eat.”

  My appetite had vanished, but I started picking at my food anyway, because I didn’t want Marnie to think I was weird.

  “Your father is Jonathan Walters, right?”

  I practically spat out a bite of mashed-up sweet potato fry. “Stepfather.”

  “Okay, okay, calm down. Keep your food in your mouth.” She seemed amused. “So … your stepfather’s Jonathan Walters?”

  “I guess.” Now I was blushing. “I mean, yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s what people do when they meet other people. They ask questions about their lives and experiences.”

  Oh. Right. I guess two years of social isolation hadn’t exactly honed my people skills. “Yes, he’s Jonathan Walters. What about you? Who are your parents?”

  “My dad’s a producer, and my mom dabbles in everything. Lately she’s been talking about opening a dog rescue. Except she’s afraid of dogs.” Marnie waved her hand nonchalantly. “But you know — details.”

  I tried to smile.

  “What’s your schedule like for the rest of the day?” she asked.

  I pulled it up on my phone. “Trig, English Lit, and Chemistry.”

  “Cool.” She leaned back again. “Have you met a lot of people?”

  “Um …” I said. “You.”

  Her laugh was loud, like she didn’t care who heard her, but it was also pleasantly musical. “Hey, you could do worse. Better no friends than the wrong friends. Take them, for instance.”

  She pointed to the tables next to the window, where the sunlight made gold halos around a bunch of kids who were obviously popular. Effortless confidence radiated off of them.

  “The pretty people,” Marnie said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Even I can’t deny that they’re nice to look at. But talking to them is like being sucked inside a video of a cat playing the piano. Pointless. If you’re into discussing what to wear to sorority rush two years in advance, by all means, those are your people.”

  “I don’t think I’m the sorority type,” I said.

  She nodded approvingly. “All right, let’s get the rest out of the way. Over there, the football players — our team is terrible, but they still get treated like minor gods…. On the left you have the Ivy League Army, who are just trying to get into a good east coast school so they can leave this California hippie-dippie nonsense in the past…. Over by the teachers’ table, those are the trust-fund kids. You see a two hundred thousand dollar car in the parking lot, guaranteed it’s one of theirs. Like half their parents should technically be in jail for fraud, and I’m not even joking. To our right we find the musicians — obsessed with local bands,” Marnie went on, her tone as dry as a desert. “A couple of them play, but they’re no good.”

  I nodded. Once the bell rang and the kids scattered, I knew they’d all look the same to me again. But there was something reassuring in having it all laid out in advance.

  “Finally, you have the hackers, the slackers, and the … there’s just no polite way to say this — the dumb kids.”

  The so-called dumb kids looked perfectly normal. And they seemed by far like the happiest people in the whole school.

  “And who are you guys?” If I was only going to have one friend, I might as well know what I was getting into.

  “We’re the Hollywood kids,” Marnie said with a shrug. “Our parents run studios, write million-dollar screenplays before breakfast, and direct blockbuster movies. Hence your belonging with us. I can’t promise we’re super nice or anything, but at least you’ll never have to hear the word jeggings come out of our mouths.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. So it was no coincidence that she’d invited me to sit there? I didn’t dwell on the thought – there was too much else to think about.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” she said. “Feel free to glaze over and ignore me for a while.”

  My eyes traveled to a table next to the emergency exit, where a guy sat alone with his laptop in front of him and a stack of notebooks out to the side. He had a mop of light brown hair, hipster-y plastic-framed glasses, and a solemn, focused look. I could tell that he didn’t belong to any of the groups Marnie had pointed out. He was oblivious to everyone and everything around him.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh,” Marnie said, arching a single eyebrow. “Wyatt. Steer clear.”

  “Why?”

  She gave me a wry glance. “Have I given you reason to doubt me? Just stay away from him. You’ll thank me later.”

  I stared at Wyatt a second longer. You couldn’t call him “cute” — he was too serious for that. But there was something appealing about his well-defined jaw and the earnestness of his expression.

  “All right, twist my arm,” Marnie
said, leaning closer. “So I assume you’ve heard of the Hollywood Killer?”

  I nodded. “Is it him?”

  She laughed, but there was an uneasy note in her laughter. “First semester of junior year, everyone at Langhorn has to do a big project — it’s called the PRM, Personal Research Mission. It’s, like, Langhorn’s ‘thing.’ They love to brag about it on the website. Anyway, Wyatt did his on the Hollywood Killer.”

  I glanced over at the bespectacled boy, rethinking his attractiveness. “What about the killer?” I asked. “Like, trying to figure out who it is?”

  “Honestly, nobody knows what Wyatt’s after.” Marnie’s smile flattened. “The assignment’s been over since January, but he won’t let it drop. He’s not a detective or anything, so what difference could he possibly make? Apparently, he finds the whole thing fascinating, which … draw your own conclusions.”

  “Weird,” I said. I mean, yeah, I’d found the killings a little fascinating myself — but I wouldn’t do a school project on them.

  “Very weird. And with yesterday’s new victim, it’s like Santa Claus came last night.” Marnie watched Wyatt warily. “Let’s just say he doesn’t get invited to a lot of parties these days.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked. “Is he nice at all, or just strange?”

  “Complicated question,” she said, turning back to her lunch — a tiny bag of pretzels and a container of yogurt. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to find out.”

  Chemistry was my last class of the day. The teacher, Mr. Hiller, was about ninety years old. He was faultlessly polite, calling all the students “Miss” and “Mister.”

  “Miss Cresky, you’ll need a lab partner,” he said, glancing around the room.

  There were two empty spots. One was at a table near the front, where a beautifully groomed blond girl — one of the pretty people — sat staring at her notebook. She looked up and gave me a pointedly unwelcoming smile.

  “Right there in the back,” Mr. Hiller said. “Mr. Sheppard.”

  Mr. Sheppard?

  Ah, yes. That would be Mr. Wyatt Sheppard. Of course. Because that’s how the universe and I roll these days.

  I carried my things to the back of the room and sat down next to him.

  He glanced up, and his eyes settled on my Gucci backpack. Then they flashed back down at his laptop like there was nothing we needed to say to one another.

  Fine with me.

  As Mr. Hiller lectured, I tried to keep my eyes from slipping shut in the sleepy afternoon warmth of the classroom. I couldn’t afford to sleep now — I needed to save up my tiredness to counteract the inevitable insomnia awaiting me at night. Especially as relaxing moonlit swims were no longer an option.

  I jerked upright after beginning to nod off and looked down at Wyatt’s notebook to see if I’d missed anything. But what he was writing wasn’t actually notes on chemistry. It was a list of names, written in an impossibly precise print.

  Before I could figure out what any of them meant, he saw me looking at the page and pulled the notebook toward himself.

  When the final bell rang, I stacked the stuff on my half of the table and slipped it into my bag. I turned to Wyatt, thinking that, since we were stuck together for the rest of the school year, it would be polite to at least say something.

  “Have a good —”

  Wrong.

  “Not interested,” he said.

  He swung his bag over his shoulder and walked away.

  Mom picked me up from school, buzzing with questions about my first day. But I didn’t feel like talking. Even though it hadn’t been a total disaster — I’d made one friend, after all — Wyatt’s cold rejection stung me more than I wanted to admit.

  He’s just a weirdo, I told myself, remembering Marnie’s warning. Why should I even care what he thought?

  After dropping me off at the house, Mom had to go to a hair appointment at a Beverly Hills salon (Cinderella can’t walk around her new castle covered in cinders, after all). I ordered her not to come home blond and went up to my room to start on my homework.

  As I sat cross-legged on my bed reading about chemical reagents, my eyelids grew heavy, and the sticky tendrils of a headache slithered around my brain, threatening to take hold. So I shut the textbook and leaned over to slide it back in my bag. As I did, I noticed that there were not one but two spiral notebooks inside.

  The first was green, crisply new — mine.

  The second notebook was red, its edges worn from use. Written on the front, in thick black marker, was: W. SHEPPARD, PLEASE CALL IF FOUND: 323-555-4334

  I must have accidentally grabbed it at the end of class.

  My first thought was, Wyatt must be freaking out.

  My next thought was, Well, I obviously have to look inside.

  I set the notebook on my bed, halfheartedly debating in my head. You shouldn’t, said one part of me. It’s Wyatt’s business. You should text him and tell him you have it.

  What would the text say, though?

  Hi, it’s Willa, the girl whose head you bit off when I tried to be nice to you in Chemistry. I know you already hate me, but you have to believe it was a TOTAL ACCIDENT that I ended up kidnapping your precious notebook.

  Yeah, no.

  And then my inner debate basically died because I’d already opened it.

  Wyatt’s handwriting was so tiny and precise that it looked like it had come out of a printer.

  BRIANNA LOGAN, 20 Y.O., TAKEN MAY 17, FOUND MAY 21

  FAITH FERNANDES, 19 Y.O., TAKEN JUNE 9, FOUND JUNE 13

  LORELEI JULIANO, 21 Y.O., TAKEN OCT 31, FOUND NOV 5

  TORI ROSEN, 18 Y.O., TAKEN MARCH 18, FOUND MARCH 22

  This was the list of names I’d gotten a glimpse of in class.

  I blinked at the perfectly formed letters, a chill spreading through my body.

  March 22 — that was yesterday’s date.

  These had to be the names of the murder victims.

  The first two were written in black ink. The third and fourth were in different colored ink — different pens — because they’d happened after Wyatt started his research.

  I pulled my new laptop onto the bed and typed in the first name: Brianna Logan. About a billion results popped up: MOVIE-THEMED MURDER BAFFLES LOS ANGELES POLICE — YOUNG ACTRESS FOUND MURDERED — STAGE SET FOR MURDER —

  Next, I typed in Faith Fernandes. “HOLLYWOOD KILLER” STRIKES AGAIN — POLICE BELIEVE MOVIE MURDERS ARE RELATED —

  With each new name, the headlines grew more ominous. After Lorelei’s murder, the tone of the writing was deadly serious.

  LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT CALLS IN FBI FOR HELP WITH HOLLYWOOD KILLER — POLICE URGE ACTRESSES TO USE CAUTION —

  I found an article from that morning’s Los Angeles Times that detailed the ways the four killings were similar: The victims had all gone missing days before being found. They were all young, beautiful up-and-coming actresses who lived alone. None of them were famous yet, but all had had bit parts in TV shows or movies. Each one had been found dead in an abandoned or empty house. The girls had all been poisoned, and then their bodies had been arranged in scenes set to mimic famous movies, just like Jonathan had said. The movies that “inspired” the killer were The Birds, Kiss of Death, Heathers, and Vertigo. I’d heard of The Birds and Heathers, and Jonathan had mentioned Kiss of Death last night, but I hadn’t heard of Vertigo before.

  Apparently all of the girls had auditions scheduled for the days they disappeared — the problem was that none of their calendars contained any helpful leads, just references to the names of fake talent agencies the killer had made up, a different one for each girl. The police thought he must be using disposable cell phones.

  The girls’ striking smiles shone from the pictures lined up alongside the article. As I looked at them, the temperature in my room seemed to drop twenty degrees. The reality of the murders hit home. The victims weren’t much older than me. Intellectually, I knew I wasn’t in danger, but still�
�. It was just so creepy.

  I went back to Wyatt’s notebook. Its pages contained detailed descriptions of the way each girl was found — Brianna sitting back against a door, covered in scratches, with fake birds staged around her; Faith in a wheelchair at the bottom of a set of stairs; Lorelei posed as if she’d crashed through a glass coffee table; and Tori set up like the victim of a fall from a tall bell tower.

  The dead girls wore full costumes, wigs, and makeup to look exactly like the characters from the films. The killer took exquisite care to get every detail perfect.

  Wyatt’s notebook also contained the girls’ addresses, their heights and weights and clothing sizes, their meager acting credits, the dates and times of the anonymous tips advising the police where to find the bodies, and the names of the responding police officers. It was more information than you could ever get just by reading news articles online.

  And yet Wyatt somehow knew all of it.

  I sat back, my heart pounding and head throbbing. I shoved the notebook to the floor. I didn’t even want it in my room. It felt dirty. It belonged in a bonfire. A shredder. But I didn’t dare destroy it, so I put it in my backpack and zipped it closed. Then I shut the backpack in my closet.

  The murders were obviously disturbing enough by themselves — but what kind of person would be so obsessed with them? Who would take such detailed notes on the deaths and let thoughts of them consume his every spare minute?

  Oh, just my lab partner, that’s all.

  A flash of light flickered in my peripheral vision. An empty ache grew in the pit of my stomach.

  I could feel the walls closing in on me. I had to get out of the house.

  My new neighborhood was made up of narrow roads that wound along the hillsides. The houses ranged from sleekly modern to old-Hollywood glam, from cottages to mansions. Some were perfectly kept up, like our house, and some were descending into rot and ruin, smothered by ivy and huge magenta-flowering bushes.